Netflix series Human Vapor began streaming exclusively on July 2.
Set in present-day Japan, the series reimagines the 1960 Toho film The Human Vapor, directed by Ishiro Honda, one of the creators behind Godzilla, as a completely original story. Here, we take a closer look at Netflix’s new interpretation of the Japanese sci-fi classic.
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From Toho’s “Transforming Human” Series to a Modern Reimagining
The foundation of Human Vapor lies in The Human Vapor, a 1960 sci-fi film that was part of Toho’s “Transforming Human” series, a collection of movies centered on humans whose bodies are altered through science. The series followed The Invisible Man and later expanded with films including The H-Man (1958) and The Secret of the Telegian.
The original The Human Vapor was born from Toho’s ambition to create science fiction in the vein of writers such as H.G. Wells and Ray Bradbury while giving it a distinctly Japanese identity. Inspired by a story treatment by American screenwriter John Meredith Lucas, the film was ultimately adapted into a screenplay by Takeshi Kimura, who wrote under the pen name Kaoru Mabuchi.
However, few details of Lucas’s original concept survive today beyond the premise of “a man made of gas commits a series of crimes.” Rather than adapting that lost treatment directly, Netflix’s Human Vapor is better understood as a modern reimagining of The Human Vapor, reworking the classic film into an entirely new story for contemporary audiences.
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Reimagining a Classic Through Modern Anxieties（
Director Shinzo Katayama, who previously worked as an assistant director to Bong Joon Ho, has built a reputation for weaving sharp social commentary into films such as Missing (2022) and Siblings of the Cape (2019). That sensibility is very much present in Human Vapor. The series also benefits from the involvement of South Korean screenwriters Yeon Sang Ho and Ryu Yong Jae, whose perspective adds another layer to the story beyond what audiences might typically expect from a Japanese production.
Given the creative team behind it, Human Vapor was never going to be a straightforward remake of the 1960 film. The story, setting, and point of view are all entirely different. What the two works do share, however, is their central tragedy: an ordinary person transformed into something inhuman by science. Rather than simply retelling the original, the Netflix series expands on one of its core ideas—social anxiety—and reinterprets it for contemporary Japan. The phrase itself becomes a recurring motif throughout the series, which unfolds across two timelines: the late 1990s and the present day.
